Justice, Ugandan-style

Idi Amin's man in the dock

Trials and tribulations

JUSTICE Moses Mukiibi looks like a British judge, in his scarlet robes and itchy wig. The laws he upholds are based on British law, too, but his budget and administrative back-up are Ugandan. So, although he is presiding over a sensational murder trial, involving the former dictator Idi Amin's army chief, things are not going smoothly.

A witness from northern Uganda, where an apocalyptic rebel cult often waylays travellers, is afraid to take the bus to Kampala, where the trial is taking place. One of the private investigators who worked on the case has died, of AIDS. A magistrate who heard two of the three defendants confess has since been sacked for taking bribes. And the prosecution's case is made even harder by the fact that the murder in question took place 30 years ago, during a period in Ugandan history when between 100,000 and 300,000 other people were being murdered by Mr Amin's government.

The victim was a politician named Eliphaz Laki, who disappeared in September 1972. His body has never been found; nor has his Volkswagen Beetle, which his killers took as booty. No serious investigation was made until 2001, when his son, Duncan Muhumuza Laki, a lawyer, decided to find out what happened. He looked up the records for his father's car in a tax registry, and found that soon after his death it had been re-registered in the name of another man, Mohammed Anyule. Mr Laki junior hired private investigators, who tracked down Mr Anyule, who led police to the purported gunman, who claimed that the murder had been ordered by one Major Yusuf Gowon, who later rose to become army chief of staff.

Mr Gowon is now in the dock, along with Mr Anyule and the alleged hit-man, Nasur Gille. The prosecution is struggling to prove its case, however. The two small fish have retracted their confessions, and Mr Gowon says he is innocent. Several witnesses are dead or cannot remember, much evidence is long lost, and Uganda's legal system is often unable to deal with the simplest crimes, let alone this one.

Mr Mukiibi, who takes the official court record in longhand, is juggling 30 cases before him this session, over half of which involve the crime of “defilement” (the age of consent is treated as a rough guideline in much of Uganda). The prosecutors are similarly swamped, and the accused men's energetic young defence lawyer, Caleb Alaka, is simultaneously negotiating a peace agreement on behalf of a rebel army that wants to give up.

Then there is the problem of language. Uganda has 50-odd, and some witnesses do not speak English, the language of the court. All evidence must be translated into English, whereupon it is retranslated into Swahili for Mr Gowon, and Lugbara, the language of Mr Anyule and Mr Gille.

On a typical day, Judge Mukiibi refuses to admit several documents as evidence because the police seem to have mislaid the originals, and he will not accept photocopies. A policeman explains that the registration document for Mr Laki's car cannot be retrieved because the bureaucrat in charge of such files is on leave.